Letter to the editor: Robinson misleads us on gun violence

Eugene Robinson's column "Guns and Terrorism: A Double-Barreled Standard" [April 24] is misleading. Robinson claims "gun violence costs 30,000 lives in this country each year" and asks "what our laws would be like if the nation were losing 30,000 lives each year to Islamist terrorism."

Obviously, lives lost to terrorism are homicides. This comparison gives the false impression that there are 30,000 gun homicides each year.

What Robinson doe not tell us is that, according to the FBI crime reports, from 1993 to 2011, the annual number of firearm homicides in America declined by 50 percent from 17,075 to 8,583. Robinson apparently inflates the "gun violence" death figure by over 20,000 deaths by lumping in suicides.

Of course, Robinson also does not tell us that criminologist Gary Kleck's classic study "Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America" found that there was no evidence that any form of gun control had any effect on the total suicide rate. Nor does he mention that countries which have oppressive gun control laws, such as Japan, have suicide rates that exceed that of the United States.